


Mutually Beneficial

by botgal



Series: A Powerful Thing [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Addiction, Blood Drinking, F/M, Rainbow Drinkers, Vampires, unrequited pale romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-04
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-06 12:28:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8750980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/botgal/pseuds/botgal
Summary: You want to give, you need someone who will accept all that you will give.He wants to forget, he needs someone who will give him a way to.You compliment each other, give and take what each other needs. Even if it's not right, even if it's not healthy, you'll do it, because you need this more than anything.Addiction is a powerful thing, after all.





	

That first bite had been something so innocent. Curiosity, most of all. Perhaps a bit of wanting fresh, living blood instead of the stagnant elixir given by ghosts willing to let her taste. The one troll who would never let your fangs anywhere near his neck was the only one who possessed that shade of bright candy red, so you had never tasted it before.

Then his dancestor and his friends came, and you found him alone one day. For once not being pestered by Meenah, mooning over that girl he liked, or being patronized by Kankri and is lectures. And, for once, seeming to be in somewhat of a pleasant mood. A conversation was struck, you made a mention of having never tasted his color of blood, and he made his offer to you. Your curiosity claimed you, how could you say no?

That first bite was all that it took.

He had rolled up his sleeve for you, letting you take his arm into your hands so you could bring his wrist to your lips. A tiny pinprick with your teeth, just enough to draw blood. He had barely even flinched.

You were gone the moment that sweet red of his hit your tongue.

It wasn't even just because it was blood from a warm, living troll. You'd had blood all up and down the spectrum in your time alive in the game once you had awakened your Rainbow Drinker powers. There was just something about his blood that was so... rich, full, tantalizing. Addicting.

You needed more, and in that moment you were going to get it. You forgot yourself for a few moment, barely heard his soft cry of surprise when you sunk your teeth into him again. You bit him more, barely stopping to lick the blood from the wounds you made as you made your way up to his throat. You lost track of how many times you had bitten him by the time you finally sank your teeth into that warm, pulsing, red-rich vein at the base of his neck. You drank deeply from there, almost moaning against his skin as you drew more and more of the rich red into your mouth.

By the time you came back to yourself, smearing further your already stained lipstick as you licked your lips, you found yourself holding an unconscious, blood-smeared troll in a sweater that was torn near to rags. Bite marks and lipstick stains littered one arm and up his chest, with an especially big mix of black smears and red liquid marring around his throat.

Your first reaction was shock and worry, of course. What in the world had you just done? He'd given you a taste of his blood and you had gone mad on him like a savage animal. You checked him over, simultaneously worried sick and grateful that, for him, this would only be a dream, if he died here he'd only wake up back in the living world. Well, at least it seemed he was still breathing. His eyes were half open and glazed over, pupils so blown out there was hardly a sliver of his gray irises showing, whole body limp as a ragdoll, chest barely rising and falling as he breathed.

You did your best to clean him up some as he lie there in the stupor from the Rainbow Drinker's Kiss (a silly purple prose literary term Aranea had brought up once after having read it in some two boondollar erotica, so silly you had thought). Cleaned the red and black from his skin, tried to tidy up whatever was left of his grey sweater. You had torn it nearly clear through the cancer symbol on his chest. Just generally fussing over him to try and make him look as he had before he'd come to you, however dreadful a thought that was.

In the end, with nothing left to do, you were just left idly sitting and holding him. Fingers running through his downy locks and rubbing around his adorably nubby horns. Kankri probably would have had a fit seeing how she was treating his dancestor right now, but she couldn't have cared less anyhow.

He woke up after quite a while, shifting sleepily as he gazed up at you. You had the apology ready on your lips, but his question to you made it die before it had the chance to so much as graze the tip of your tongue.

_'Would you want to do that again?'_

The routine became something to look forward to. You waited, he came right to you. No one could say you were making him do something he didn't want. It was more than obvious that he was the one pushing for this. He was the one who leaped into your embrace as soon as you were both alone. He was the one who bared his neck to you with such an openly wanting and trusting look in his eyes. 

Perhaps you felt a bit unfair sometimes that you felt you were the one to get the most benefit out of this little arrangement of yours. He seemed perfectly content just being bitten, then lying prone afterwards in whatever stupor your bites brought him. You were the conscious one, and you were the one who got to taste that sweet, addicting red in you mouth as your fangs sunk into his flesh. And then you got to hold him close as you pampered and coddled away at his limp form.

Eternities ago it seemed you were once so vehemently rebellious towards what was seen as the destined role of your caste. You had rejected everything to do with being motherly and gentle and everything that had to do with being a Jade blood. Now you were past that phase, feeling confident enough in yourself to accept the motherly part of your instincts, but with so few who might accept them.

Now you had Karkat, though, and he soaked up every ounce of your affection like a dying man desperately sucking drips from a faucet, even if he was unconscious for the most of it. Feeling his hair, rubbing his horns, holding his warm little body to your person, pressing little kisses to his cheeks, forehead, where you had bitten him. All as he lay still in your grasp, purely reflexive purrs and chirrs slipping past his lips in response to your touches. He was like a touch-starved little purr-beast in your arms when he started waking up again, nuzzling and rubbing and languidly stretching as his head was not quite clear from his latest round of bites.

There may have been a part of you that felt some guilt for taking so much enjoyment in this. For enjoying the look of near reverence in his gaze as he stared up at you in the aftermath. Like enjoying him in such a vulnerable state was just taking advantage of him, no matter how much it was he seemed to want it. This wasn't healthy for him, not like the calm that might be brought by the tender pale embrace of a trusted moirail. Because this wasn't pale. No. This was a transaction between you both, nothing more. He got to drift away from his too many worries, fears, and pains, and you got to satisfy your addiction and act out your pale fantasies.

You were somewhat glad that his dark sweater made him so starkly different in color from the Vantas you knew, the fantasy was addicting enough without feeling like you were actually holding a smaller, sweeter, softer version of him. One who didn't rebuff you so harshly or show such blatant direspect and anger when you tried to show any amount of affection, platonic or pale. This fantasy in your arms was many times better, the perfectly warm little doll you could just pretend with, if only for a while.

You're not even honestly sure how he would react if he found out you were doing this, he'd been angry enough when you had done nothing more than call the boy 'cute' in front of him upon meeting him. Word traveled fast around this bubble, though, and you'd rather not chance dealing with him if he were to find out, so you did try your best to keep this discrete. You were fairly certain some of them were aware on some level of what was going on while Kankri remained oblivious of what went on between you and his dancestor.

You remember catching a glimpse of Damara watching you as you and he absconded to a more private place for your usual meet-ups, but if she had said a word to anyone but bronze blood who was the only one to understand her, they wouldn't have even understood. Aranea was the one who seemed to know just what was happening, but chose not to say anything, surprising given how she was literally willing to pay people to listen to her exposition, and how this bit of gossip would have drawn in listeners. Latula had made an off-hand comment about how you and the 'mini Vantas' seemed to be getting along so well, and you couldn't help but note a slight downturn at the corner of her dark lips as she mentioned it.

Kurloz was the only one who had ever caught you and he in the act. You chose to feed easily that day, Karkat resting limply on his side as you gently rubbed the stresses from his overwrought form, occasionally lapping up more red from the holes you had pierced in his neck and had chosen not to try to wipe clean so you could just keep on tasting at leisure. Then, suddenly, he was there. Staring down at you both with a gentle smile and the pearl eyes that all you ghosts possessed. You had frozen up, attempted to explain yourself, but he shook his head the moment you opened your red-stained mouth. A single finger touched his lips, stitches strained from even the slightest of secret smiles he gave you, and then he was gone again.

In the end, perhaps it doesn't really matter who knows. Even if Kankri knew, he couldn't stop the two of you. You were too deeply entrenched in this. You craved his blood and the outlet he gave you, and he just wanted to stop feeling. So what if the only reason he nuzzled into your chest and looked up to you so adoringly was because you gave him a chance to escape? And so what if you let him look at you like that, encouraged it even, and pretended like it was true emotion? You both wanted it, you both needed it, so why not let it take its course.

This little troll was your addiction, and he loved being so.

And just what was so wrong with that?

 


End file.
